The year is now 2010 AD. Doing business in person is OVER. It’s completely unnecessary, as well as a waste of time and billable hours. Let me explain to you how things work now.

Virtual Collaboration

When you go to work, what do you do? You sit in your cubicle and you type on your computer. How do you interact with your coworkers? O_o Do you get up and walk over to where they’re sitting and start running your mouth? No. You don’t. You click on your instant messaging program, such as AIM, iChat, gTalk, whatever, and you type directly to them.

If they’re logged in, looking at their screen and interested in chatting with you, they’ll return your communication at their earliest convenience. If you can’t get to them that way, you send them an email. If you can’t get to them *that* way, you send them a voicemail.

The point is that the people that you’re in the same office with don’t actually need to be in that office with you. They COULD have been on a different floor and you could have communicated with them exactly as efficiently. They could have been in a different BUILDING and you could have had the same interactions. They could have been across town or in another city, state or COUNTRY and you could have interacted with them exactly as easily as you did with someone that currently shares your physical space.

When you’re working on your computer and you want to show somebody something, what do you do? Print it out? Wait by the printer for your pages to be served? Walk your pages over to where your coworker is sitting and discuss them? Welcome to 1990. Nice business you have.

No. You share information with your coworkers via computer. You share documents, images, audio files, videos… It doesn’t make any sense to create something on a computer and then take it offline to show it to someone that has an online connection. Plug this into the aforementioned business model and you can share files and concepts with people in another neighborhood, borough, city, state or country just as quickly as you can share files with someone that shares your physical space.

Video Conferencing

Another technological advance that you should be aware of and taking advantage of is video conferencing. With the press of a button on your end and a press of a button on your coworker or client’s end, you can video chat with them, f2f (face to face) as if they were sitting across a table from you. You can hear them. You can see them. They can see and hear you. You can send them files or images for their review. You can collaborate with each other in real-time on sites like Google Wave and drop.io. You can exchange large files directly or via Usendit or FTP servers.

You can also share your screen with whomever you’re chatting with. This comes in handy so that you don’t have to send anyone anything. You give them access to your screen and they watch as you bring up images or documents or even edit a video while they give their opinions remotely from their own office or wherever they happen to be.

If you’re both on Macs and using iChat, you can even utilize machine control to “take over” the other person’s computer. The other day, I used machine control to change some effects on a client’s Final Cut Pro project on their own computer while they sat there and watched. I didn’t need to go to their location. I didn’t need to even see them, as they shared the screen with me directly and we communicated via iChat audio.

In fact.. Since I work via computer, *most* of my clients, I don’t see at all. They either send me physical materials or I receive them via internet. I work on them and then either post the new version of the video to the internet and send them links so they and their coworkers & clients can review it or I open a screen-sharing window and play it down for them while we discuss it.

Time Is Money

The work I do is based on deadlines. If something’s due next Tuesday, I might very well put in 14 hours on it for two days in a row and knock it out. I also might put in 2 hours a day for 7 days in a row. This means that I can make money at any time of the day that I’m physically awake. It all comes down to when I’m in The Zone and I feel energetic and efficient about knocking projects out.

As a freelancer, any hour, half hour or quarter hour of the day is potentially billable time. I might wake up at 4am and put in 3 hours of work before the client even wakes up. I might be ready to go party at 7pm and get an emergency call for a last-minute revision from a client and end up putting in two billable hours calling up their project, making the changes, rendering and uploading the new version.

Work is done, invoices are sent, money is paid… ALL without any of us ever being in the same physical space. Not only is it unnecessary, but movement wastes billable hours, and Time is Money. There’s no reason for us to TRAVEL somewhere to have the exact same exchange of ideas we could have just as efficiently remotely.

The only exception to that is when I need to do an on-site supervised edit. There are times when it’s not efficient for the client to send me tons of footage and I need to go to their location to sit with producers to create the show.

In that case, travel can’t be avoided. In other circumstances, the clock starts and stops when I begin and end concentrating on your project. If we decide to video conference for 30 minutes, you’re billed for 30 minutes of time. If you’re calling me on the phone, you get billed for that time. If I’m reading and responding to your emails, you get billed for that time.

WHENEVER it is that I’m doing something for the benefit of your project, you’re getting charged for it. It’s in your best interest not to add preparation and travel time to that. If I have to break down equipment, pack it up, transport it and set it up at your location and then do the entire process in reverse when we’re done, all that goes into your budget.

Wasting Time

Anything that falls outside of the categories of “What I feel like doing” and “What I’ve agreed to accept money to do” is most likely going to be completely ignored. I currently have 11,498 unread email messages and 2,388 unread Facebook messages. Unread.. As in I never clicked on them. (As a side note.. Some of my friends would have had WAY more unread emails than I do, except they declared email bankruptcy and created an “inbox zero” condition by deleting all the emails they knew they were never going to go back and deal with)

I have too many people asking me for too many things to concentrate on the vast majority of them for more than the time it takes me to read the name on the message and the subject, which is approximately 3 seconds (entirely without sarcastic exaggeration). If I can’t figure out why I should read your email from the title, I’m not going to waste my time reading it.

Spending even 20 seconds per email, reading 3 of them wastes a full minute. Reading 30 of them wastes 10 minutes. In yesterday’s 24-hour period, I received 189 emails. At 20 seconds per, reading all of them would have wasted more than a billable hour of my time yesterday. That’s not considering the time it would have taken to think about and reply to all of those.

There’s too much going on with my day for me to waste time reading emails. This is the same thing I said about Twitter more than a year ago as far as people that claim to follow tens of thousands of people. It’s absolutely impossible because that would mean they were spending every waking minute reading and/or replying to Twitter posts, but that’s a different article.

Future Plans

Other than scheduling work, I don’t make plans. There are two reasons for this. The first one is that I don’t know what I want to do until I want to do it. The second is that if I agreed to do something with you on XYZ day and then something different comes up ranging from doing work for a client to having drinks with my best girlfriends to being asleep, that’s what I’m going to do during that time that I told you I was going to meet you. In fact, I probably won’t even remember that I agreed to do whatever it was you wanted to do when the time arrives.

Everybody that actually knows me knows that I’m EXCELLENT at doing what I want to do and HORRIBLE at doing anything I don’t care about or don’t feel like doing. I can’t tell you today what I’m going to want to do three days from now. When that day arrives, I’m most likely NOT going to feel like doing whatever we talked about. I’d rather do something else or nothing at all.

For that reason, I don’t waste other people’s time making plans with them that I might veto at the last minute. I might have a new client or a new girlfriend before that time arrives and whatever you mentioned to me exited my mind a long time ago.

Welcome To 2010

There’s a new format of business & social interaction going on, whether you’re aware of it or not. There are people I communicate with every single day via computer or text messaging and we’ve been doing this for years. There are people I do business with entirely efficiently & professionally without ever having to go somewhere to physically be in their presence.

The ability to multitask and switch gears on the fly when I feel my attention shift from one zone to another is what makes my days four times as productive as most people. I stay on my grind twice as long and achieve twice as much during each hour I focus on something.

Much of my efficiency is derived from NOT wasting time all day. I don’t waste time traveling places. I don’t waste time meeting with people in person when we could do it on the phone or via video conferencing. I don’t waste time doing things that I don’t want to do. I stay in my zone and when my focus switches, I apply myself to whatever the best current use of my time is. I don’t waste billable hours reading and answering random or irrelevant email.

I party hard and do my best to enjoy my friends to the fullest. I stay in touch with people in England, Japan, Israel, Hawaii, Texas, California and lots of other places around the globe on a weekly basis. The time of being limited to your current geographical region is OVER. We now have world-wide opportunities to do business with and socialize with anyone with whom we share ideas and/or ideals.

There’s too much to be done with our days to waste time on old business models of sitting down for drinks or traveling to conferences in other states or countries. Create and maintain your online presence. Stay in touch with current friends and meet new ones via Social Media. Propagate your business & social brands. Reduce the amount of time you waste every day and increase your efficiency.

Get with the program. Recognize the opportunities available to you TODAY. Work smarter, not harder. Open your mind and realize your true potential. Your friends & clients aren’t just down the street from you.. They’re EVERYWHERE now.

Welcome to the new world, Neo.

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Everything you do in public adds to or subtracts from your cred, and is compiled in your virtual resume. Which resume are you building, and what do you hope to get out of that?

Bill Cammack – Channeling What Women Want

When I got started, three years ago, in 2006, My idea was to make a site that started out as my making my own videos but would expand to a group of people collaborating to make videos for the site. This is why I was initially branding ReelSolid.TV instead of BillCammack.com.

Pretty much immediately, I started getting recognition for my videos, except *I* wasn’t getting recognition for my videos. People knew that ReelSolid.TV was producing them, but nobody knew who ReelSolid.TV was.

Once I understood that, I had a choice. I was either going to continue publicizing the group (which was only me anyway), or I was going to start publicizing MYSELF. I chose to publicize myself because the group is merely an umbrella.. a catch-all. Let’s say that ReelSolid.TV is defense and BillCammack.com is offense. ReelSolid is more saying “I’m not necessarily the one that created this, though it’s my site”. BillCammack is saying “I did this. Add it to my resume”.

2 1/2 years later (I think I branded ReelSolid.TV for 6 months before changing over), I’m satisfied with my results. I’m currently top-10 out of 395 million entries for “Bill” and top-10 out of 396 thousand Google entries for “Cammack”. That works for me, because anything that I do these days, people are like “Oh.. That’s the same guy that did this, this and that”. In fairness, I’m a freelancer, so it’s actually in my best business interest for people to recognize my name as well as my best personal interest. I like to “Stand or Fall” on my own merit.

Nicknames

Other people like to brand nicknames. Two that come to mind offhand are PurpleCar and Pistachio. Thanks to Social Media, this is a viable option. You can use a nickname and associate that name with a consistent avatar across SM sites and people will become accustomed to addressing you by your nickname. Also, by tagging your media with your nickname, people will be able to find your work or writing on Google just as easily as your “Government Name”.

The only problem here is the same problem I had with ReelSolid.TV. Unless you intend on continuously utilizing your nickname to do business or blogging or whatever you do, you’re probably better off using something that will come along with you into your new projects or genres. Granted, nicknames are less of an issue than something specifically saying TV, because if you want to go into music, you can be PurpleCar Records or Pistachio International.

An upside of nicknames is that they’re catchy and unique, at least within your niche, and therefore way more easily remembered and shared with others. I’m sure there are tons of Lauras that do the same thing, but only one Pistachio. There are lots of Christines, but only one PurpleCar. There are tons of Bills, but only one ReelSolid.TV

Company Names

Other people’s approach to the internet is to ONLY open their mouths to say something about their company or the company they work for. You’re basically the mouthpiece or the “face” of that company. That’s beautiful for the company, but once you leave that company, there’s going to be no trace that you ever existed on the internet.

That’s exactly what some people want, so that works for them. Other people leave a company after a couple of years and think they’ve developed such a fine reputation amongst the people they’ve interacted with on the net, only to find out that outside of the context of “He/She works for Company X”, nobody recognizes you at all, and you basically have to start from scratch.

I think the question really comes down to what you’re trying to build on the net. Do you want people to know who YOU are and what YOU’VE done? or are you only on the internet for business purposes? What will it mean to you three years from now when nothing’s published under your Government Name and everything you wrote comes up under your former job’s name? OTOH.. What will it mean to you down the line if people know your name, but didn’t learn enough about your company in the meantime to make it a household name and as successful and recognized as it could possibly have been?

So… What do *you* brand, and why?

~ Bill Cammack

Twitter: BillCammack
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Social Media Category: billcammack.com/category/social-media
 

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If you’re going to make television shows, or at this point, shows for the web… SOMEBODY on your team needs to KNOW. HOW. TO. MAKE. TELEVISION. SHOWS!!! :/

If you cut this corner, your productions will look like trash, and deservedly so. Now you can’t say no one ever told you.

I was minding my business one day and got a call from some so-called television production company to come in and interview with them to create a pilot for this show they were trying to sell. They had received my name from someone I had worked with before, so I decided (against my better judgement, haha) to go see what they wanted.

This was back in the day, so I show up to this so-called television production company with tapes. Beta tapes & 3/4″, just in case they were so primitive as to still be using 3/4″. Of course, it turns out that they had NEITHER. No Beta Decks in-house and No 3/4″ decks. So, that was that for my demo materials. Of course, at this point in time, my demo reel is right here on my site ===> (see sidebar), and companies are encouraged to check it out before wasting my time.

So then, this guy, who, by the way had ZERO air about him of knowing ANYTHING about television production… I’m guessing he was actually a secretary or assistant producer or something and that the people that actually know what they’re talking about weren’t there… This guy asks me if I’ve ever edited a reality show before.

Suppressing the instinct to ask “HAVE *YOU*???”, I eventually said “No, but I’ve seen a bunch of them and I know the formula”. I then proceeded to recite the formula to him. During the process, I happened to mention “confessionals”, made popular by MTV’s “Real World” series. When I said that word… “confessionals”… the guy choked up. Like he looked like he stopped breathing, like someone had suddenly grabbed his throat. So I go “You DID shoot confessionals… right?”… Then the guy looks all embarrassed and admits that they didn’t.

This is where I got REALLY suspicious, because television production is “garbage in, garbage out”. You can’t make up for footage people never shot, especially when you only had access to the people in your “reality” show for a small amount of time and they’re GONE NOW.

So anyway, I chatted with the guy for a while longer, then he said something to the effect of “I’ll let you know”, but he wasn’t even good at playing THAT off. Suppressing the instinct to say “Dude. Why don’t you just stop lying. You don’t want me to work on your so-called show”, I acted like I was going to expect his call, smiled, shook his hand and left.

Obviously, what was going on there was that these people had NO IDEA what they were doing and were looking to hire an editor to save the day and make something out of their NOTHING footage. That’s all well and good, and I’m sure they found someone. The problem with that secretary-dude’s line of questioning was that it’s not MY JOB to create the show. It’s MY JOB to do what the PRODUCER tells me to do. It’s the producer’s job to do what the EXECUTIVE PRODUCER tells him or her to do.

In general, the EP is the person who signs off on the final product. The EP knows what the standards are and whether what you’ve created is good enough to go on the air. The producer knows how the company likes their shows done, so it’s up to THE PRODUCER to determine how the show flows by going through the raw footage, selecting sound bites and video and putting them in an order that a) makes sense and b) is interesting to the viewer.

While it’s possible for the EP and the producer to be the same person, SOMEONE has to be in charge of both stations. Someone has to be the last word when it comes to quality control and someone has to be the person to determine the flow of the show. If it’s not the same person, the producer needs to have a very good idea of how the EP likes things or every time your video goes up for review, there are going to be changes. This is a waste of your time as well as your money if you’re hiring a freelance editor. If you’re working with a salaried staffer, feel free to waste time.

If you don’t have these bases covered, you end up with the blind leading the blind. You have people who have NO IDEA what elements create a good television show signing off on work that people who have NO IDEA how to make a good show created. This becomes obvious when it’s time for the average joe to sit down in front of the television (or at this point, their computer) and watch your product. Here are some of the problems you will experience:

Nothing of interest happening in your show

It’s the EP’s job to tell you that nothing’s happening in your show, that it’s boring and it needs to be fixed in order for it to be successful on television. The producer needs to pick up on this information and make it part of their mental database so they stop making the same mistakes in the future. The EP can’t afford to let a boring show go out the door, because if people don’t care what happened this week, they won’t be back next week. When people don’t come back, your ratings drop. When your ratings drop, you get cancelled. When you get cancelled, people get fired.

No story arc

The story arc is the reason people stay tuned (other than character development). There has to be a reason.. Something people are looking forward to seeing, or something that they are hoping the characters are going to avoid. Without a story arc, there’s no tension. Without tension, you can’t hold a viewer’s interest. It just doesn’t matter whether they see the rest of your show or the next episode because they’re not emotionally invested in the outcome of your show.

No good cliffhangers leading to the commercial breaks

The only thing that’s going to keep people from changing the channel during commercials is that you’ve set up something that they don’t want to miss. This is basically the same as story arc, but much more short-term. There might be 4 or 5 segments to a show. You don’t want to end your segments on a flat note, because that’s how many opportunities people will have to YAWN, change the channel and get involved with some other show that captures their attention.

No interesting character development

If you have someone that’s interesting, make them one of the main focal points of the show. If you have people that are NOT interesting, play them off to the side or preferably to the BACK, if not out of the show ENTIRELY! If you have interesting people doing uninteresting things, cut those parts out of your show.

If you don’t develop your characters, nobody will be emotionally invested in what happens to them, which means they won’t care about your cliffhangers, story arc or anything else. This is something that’s normally dealt with in the pilot stage, and lack of interesting characters plus potential for their development via interesting scenarios usually results in a “Pass”, meaning “Thanks, but No Thanks” and you get sent back the drawing board to dust yourself off and try again.

No passionate viewers / fanbase developed

If your show is wack, no community is going to develop around it. This means that you won’t have people DYING for next week to come around so they can see the next episode of Miami Vice (not the garbage movie… the really good television series). It’s your passionate viewers that will stop whatever they’re doing to go home and watch your show or make sure the bar turns it on. It’s your passionate viewers that make sure to DVR your show so they don’t miss out on the water-cooler talk the next day at work. It’s your passionate viewers that keep your ratings high so your advertisers feel like they’re getting their money’s worth…

No viral dissemination of information about your show

If your show is boring, there won’t be any buzz. There won’t be any Facebook groups made about it. It won’t be a trending topic on Twitter. Your website won’t have any comments on the posts. Nobody’s going to be telling anyone else about you, because everyone’s looking for something interesting. Nobody’s going to be blogging about your show on their sites. At this point in time, even a locally-based internet show can have fans all over the world. When your show is already garbage, it’s too late to convince people that it’s not. Make sure you hire someone that can tell you that this show isn’t good enough and can tell you how to make it acceptable if not EXCELLENT.

No advertiser, investor or sponsor interest

Without passionate viewers, community, viral dissemination or the appearance that you have any clue whatsoever about how to make a good televison/web show, you will either have ZERO advertiser/investor/sponsor interest from the giddyap, or if you had it when you started, you’ll lose it when it comes time for those people to renew their deals with you. This could be avoided, or at the very least, the chances of this minimized by hiring an EP with a reputation for quality programming. The EP is the General. People think that just because they have the money and paid to create the company that they should automatically have final say on what goes out the door. That’s called “hubris”. Get over yourself and do yourself the favor of hiring people that actually know what they’re doing when it comes to television. If you want to be successful, everyone needs to play their position. Your position might be getting money. Let someone else have the final say on whether your program’s “ready for prime time” or not.

These issues are normally dealt with at the pilot stage. If your pilot doesn’t convince people that you know how to make an interesting and well-received show, you normally don’t get a deal and get sent back to the drawing board. It’s similar to being a rapper. If you don’t have a good demo tape, nobody’s going to take the chance on you and pay for you to record “for real” in a studio.

This is why you want to hire an EP to let you know whether what you’ve produced is worth shopping or not. Believe me, it’s worth it to spend the money up front and save yourself the anguish and embarrassment of producing a show that everybody says sucks while you spend a small fortune producing something that never should have received a greenlight in the first place and simultaneously trash your so-called television production company’s reputation for quality and excellence in programming.

~ Bill Cammack
twitter.com/BillCammack
facebook.com/BillCammack

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So I had mentioned to a friend of mine a few months back that I was going to start doing Reputation Management / Online Presence Management for people other than myself. I’ve pretty much peaked, heading through year #2 of being a top-10 Google result for “Bill” as well as a top-10 Google result for “Cammack”. There’s nowhere else to go. I’m bored. *yawn*

Bill & Debbie

So yesterday, I’m chatting with this same friend, who’s starting a new business soon. He wants to be involved with Social Media, except he sees how much time, energy and research I put into it and he’d rather spend his time making money than doing research he’s not going to get paid for and that I already did.

As we’re chatting, I can tell that he doesn’t really “get it”, and eventually, he directly says something to the effect of “I can’t see what my benefit is in getting involved in these sites and this social stuff”. This makes sense to me, because unless you’re LIVING Social Media, you’re not going to be privy to the effects… You’ll only be able to see the “cause”….

What I mean by that in my case is that if you pay attention to my internet presence, what you will see is a lot of socializing. Socializing through IRL meetups, tweetups, pictures, videos, links posted to websites, comments made on people’s blogs, my own blog posts… *presence*. What you’re seeing is how I reach out to other people and relate to them. This.. is the “cause”.

One of the MANY, MANY “effects” is the new access and relationships I have to them and that they have to me which makes us more likely to do business with each other or pass business to each other that we’re not going to do. These relationships might not appear to the casual onlooker to be anything but people hanging out & having good times together. What happens, though, is that people get comfortable with your character as a person as well as your work ethic / dedication to your projects, and that’s worth way more than emailing a resume to some company you’d like to do work for.

I’ve been freelance for years, and I don’t work for random people. I don’t check Craig’s List and wherever else might have listings for random people that need video editing work done. I get all my work through word of mouth. People call *ME* and ask if I’m available to work on their projects, not the other way around. This is because when I get on a project, I’m ON.THE.CASE. In my entire career, I’ve “missed air” ONCE, which was something like at 4am, doing an overnight shift for Bloomberg Information Televison, and my 2-minute news package went on in the next cycle (I think 20 minutes later? 30?), instead of at the exact time it was scheduled. That was my fault, and I don’t remember why it happened, but the point is that other than that, I have like a 99.996% success rate for completing projects on deadline.

Because of that, and other things, like my overall fun and easygoing demeanor, people tend to hear of me from other people I’ve done good work for and contact me with projects. THAT is Social Media in action. My way of being is an advertisement for myself as a person and my work is an advertisement for my skill at what I do.

Similarly, Social Media opens doors for you when otherwise, you’d have to stand in line with the rest of the nameless, faceless, personality-less resumes that are laying on the potential client’s desk. Or, maybe the nameless, faceless, personality-less emails that the client receives, explaining EVERYTHING about the proficiencies of your group and NOTHING about who you are and what you’re about as people.

So, essentially, Social Media is rolling the dice, in a way… You’re putting more information out there and offering people chances to “judge” you. People overuse that term and cry about it too much, “WAAAAAAAAH… YOU’RE JUDGING MEEE! WAAAAAAAAHHHH!!! :O”, but that’s exactly what it is. People will use what you present to them to decide whether they like you or not… Whether they love you or not… Whether they want to do business with you or not… Whether they respect you or not… Whether you know what you’re talking about or not… Whether you’re current & relevant or not… Whether you can bring any ROI to their company or not… Whether they want to sit down for some brews with you or not…..

If you think you have things to bring to the table that people would enjoy and it would enhance your relationship to them or even CREATE one if you don’t have a relationship to them right now, by all means, Social Media is for you. If you don’t feel that way about yourself or you just don’t LIKE socializing or you aren’t any good at it, you might want to leave SM alone entirely or hire someone else to handle that business for you.

Bill & Dan

Another question was how could he be EFFICIENT in making Social Media connections? Well.. That requires research on WHERE people in your field or industry congregate on the internet. Is it on Facebook? Ning sites? Specific blogs? Twitter? FriendFeed? Forums? Newsgroups? Is there a Newsletter you should subscribe to? Bulletin Boards? IRC chat rooms? Meebo? Tinychat? Oovoo? Tokbox? Is there a show you should watch on YouTube or Blip.TV?…..

If you know where to look, go for it. If you don’t, then you might be better off creating a presence in as many arenas as possible and letting the chips fall. Or, you may be better off leaving Social Media out altogether, as the ends don’t justify the means, according to your company’s bottom line.

The way I see it.. As long as you’re a decent person and you’re decently good at what you do for business, socializing and networking is completely in your best interest. Especially in these times where companies are laying off entire departments, NOW is your opportunity to cultivate new clients that are looking for what it is that you do but don’t want to hire a staffer. NOW is the time to let people know what you’re bringing to the table. If you have to show them a YouTube video to do that.. fine. If you have to write a blog post or comment on someone else’s.. fine. If you have to participate in discussions or live streams or IRL conferences to get people to know who you are and what you do.. fine. The opportunity’s here right now, and there’s no telling how long the window will remain open…

I’m in an unique position because I make friends quickly & often. I’m what people call a “connector”. Every time I go somewhere, I’m introduced to new people and I try to make sure that people that I already know are cool get introduced to other people I know are cool. The system works via checks & balances. I have 286 mutual Facebook Friends with someone I know. This means that I have 286 opportunities to receive a negative review of her, and I haven’t received *ONE*. :D

Online Presence Management puts you in position to win or lose based on your personal merits. That’s a game that I very much enjoy playing. Are there lots of pitfalls? Certainly. If you can’t see how increasing your socialization and/or networking can help your business, you might want to chat with a consultant. If they’re legit and they can’t see it either, they’ll tell you so and you can save your money for traditional advertising or stamps to mail those resumes around. :) If they can see something you can’t, that might be a good opportunity for you… again, assuming they’re legit.

Social Media can take up a lot of your time, but can also produce great benefits, if utilized properly. Currency (Speed) is important. Relevance is important. Intimate Knowledge of your product or service is important. Passion is important. Accessibility is important. Redundancy is important (using the same avatar across social networks, for instance). Recognition as a thought leader or someone who tests out the new technologies is important. It all comes down to making sure that the time you spend on SM (or the money you spend, hiring someone to do it for you) works for your bottom line and is an overall benefit to you or your company.

~ Bill Cammack

Twitter: BillCammack
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Social Media Category: billcammack.com/category/social-media
 

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